PAST PRESENT – What’s new in History

Timekeepers by Simon Garfield

Midnight tonight (31 December 2016) will be one moment in the continuing flow of time, no different essentially from any other. Only because human societies are organised by collective effort, and require punctuation marks in their narratives, midnight will be made significant. The calendar will change to a new year. There will be fireworks, sentimentality,

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SAS Rogue Heroes

The SAS was the brainchild of David Stirling, a languid young Scottish aristocrat. With difficulty he persuaded General Claude Auchinleck, the 8th Army commander in WW 2, to approve a mobile force operating behind enemy lines. The plan was to disrupt communications and infiltrate aerodromes to destroy planes on the ground. He gathered a motley

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The Reformation

2017 will be a significant year for readers of history, particularly religious history. It will be 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Church door at Wittenberg in Saxony. For convenience, the event in 1517  is taken to be the start of what came to be known as ‘The Protestant Reformation’.

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The Silk Roads

Sometimes a new history book receives so many plaudits and commendations from a variety of sources that it would be remiss not to read it. Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads: A New History of the World is one such. It’s a reasonable assessment that Lanark is not the centre of the world. That being granted, has there

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